'THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES - SELECTED ESSAYS' by Clifford Geertz begins with a declaration, this is not a "General Theory of Cultural Interpretation." It is however, as the author mentions in preface, a view of what culture is, what role it plays in social life, and how it ought properly to be studied.
The first chapter discusses different thories of culture, like Susanne Langer and 'certain ideas' that 'burst upon the intellectual landscape with a tremendous force. They resolve so many fundamental problems at once that they seem also to promise that they will resolve all fundamental problems, clarify all obscure issues. Everyone snaps them up as the open sesame of some new positive science, the conceptual center-point around which a comprehensive system of analysis can be built.' Or the view that 'man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun' and takes 'culture to be those webs'. Therafter the book discusses in various essays like the 'Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man', the 'Growth of Culture and the Evolution of Mind' and 'Religion As a Cultural System', manifestation of particularities of humans, the sum total of which is what we call culture.
Discussions in this book on all the above topics are quite extensive and garnished abundantly with factual tit bits from a wide variety of communities from all continents. But I notice one thing missing. No logical arguement is given for the necessity of culture. Why should man have a culture? What metabolic need is satisfied here?
(In fact in attempting to answer such questions only I fell upon my theories explained in my book, The Unsure male.)
The first chapter discusses different thories of culture, like Susanne Langer and 'certain ideas' that 'burst upon the intellectual landscape with a tremendous force. They resolve so many fundamental problems at once that they seem also to promise that they will resolve all fundamental problems, clarify all obscure issues. Everyone snaps them up as the open sesame of some new positive science, the conceptual center-point around which a comprehensive system of analysis can be built.' Or the view that 'man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun' and takes 'culture to be those webs'. Therafter the book discusses in various essays like the 'Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man', the 'Growth of Culture and the Evolution of Mind' and 'Religion As a Cultural System', manifestation of particularities of humans, the sum total of which is what we call culture.
Discussions in this book on all the above topics are quite extensive and garnished abundantly with factual tit bits from a wide variety of communities from all continents. But I notice one thing missing. No logical arguement is given for the necessity of culture. Why should man have a culture? What metabolic need is satisfied here?
(In fact in attempting to answer such questions only I fell upon my theories explained in my book, The Unsure male.)
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